This two-day conference to honor Professor Peter Reill and his distinguished scholarship in the field of Enlightenment studies comprises four panels thematically organized around the enduring concerns that shape his interpretive vision: life forms in Enlightenment historical, vitalist, and esoteric thinking in the long eighteenth century. The first panel entails a re-examination of the nature and structures of Enlightenment historical thought and the centrality of Enlightenment historicism to the formation of a modern understanding of history. Two panels on vitalism and its translations investigate the application of vitalist epistemology—derived from a biological model of goal-directed living forces—to political economy, natural history, and civil society. The conference concludes with a final panel on esotericism and the Enlightenment. It explores the significance of alchemical, hermetical, and occult thought for Enlightenment thinkers and challenges the bifurcation often made by scholars between esotericism and magic, on the one hand, and “rational” scientific Enlightenment experiment, observation, and theory, on the other.

Program

Session I: History and Society
Chair: David Myers, University of California, Los Angeles

Kent Wright, Arizona State University
“Rousseau and the Anti-Historicists: Strauss and Althusser”

Martin Gierl, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
“Johann Christoph Gatterer and History as a Science”

Session II: Vitalism and its Political Translations
Chair: Kirstie McClure, University of California, Los Angeles

Kris Pangburn, Colorado College
“Vitalist Natural Philosophy in the Political Thought of John Stuart Mill and Wilhelm von Humboldt”

Helena Rosenblatt, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
“The Liberal Mysticism of Madame de Staël”